The march from Neanderthal abyss to blissful nirvana is marked by great forward strides and occasional stumbles backwards. The professional sports world gave us a bit of both this month.
The hiring of former Major League Baseball player Billy Bean as MLB's ambassador for inclusion is one of those great strides that was nearly unthinkable during Bean's playing days. There were no role models for gay baseball players when Bean was an outfielder for the Detroit Tigers in the late 1980s. Only one MLB player had ever come out of the closet – Glenn Burke, after his retirement from the Los Angeles Dodgers and Oakland A's, – and the sport had essentially turned its back on him.
For eight years Bean played ball and kept his sexuality secret before finally abandoning his career in his chosen sport. He left, as he says now, "for all the wrong reasons," believing there was no way he would be accepted is he disclosed his sexuality. All that changed this month when MLB announced his hire.
"MLB saw what was happening with players in other sports coming out – players like Jason Collins and Michael Sam," Bean told the Bay Area Reporter. "They felt the need to be in front of the curve. My hiring is about the idea of empowering people. If they had something like this when I was a player, I would not have quit. I would have felt someone out there actually cared about me."
Bean said he will meet with players and teams, write a blog on mlb.com, and use social media to spread a culture of inclusion in baseball.
"We're going to start by making sure every team from the big leagues on down has a workplace environment that is inclusive and supportive," Bean, 50, said. "It's easy to presume everyone knows the same things. But players come from many different cultures. We need to expose players to education that shows an inclusive environment. Baseball is looking out for itself in this way with the most modern resources and understanding of our culture."
Bean said the homophobia he experienced in and out of baseball was often unspoken but never out of sight.
"Homophobia is inherent in so many parts of our culture that it still seems okay and we have to unlearn what is ingrained in us," Bean said. "In 10 years of playing professionally, no one called me a bad name. But my father was an ex-Marine and he used the word 'faggot.' I wasn't being called names as a player, but I was hiding a big secret. Our ultimate goal now is to put the best, healthiest product on the field."
For Bean, his work will be less about talking about gay rights and more about working for a culture that respects all individuals regardless of gender or orientation.
While baseball appeared to be moving forward, football was stumbling around with the rambling comments of former NFL coach and current NBC analyst Tony Dungy and the inexplicably light disciplining of a player for knocking a woman unconscious in Atlantic City.
Dungy stuck his foot in his mouth by saying he would not have drafted Sam because of the "distractions" his team would be subjected to after he came out. Dungy's apologists immediately began to try to parse his words in a way to suggest he wasn't being homophobic, but the bottom line remained that he was saying teams should not take openly gay players. Period.
"I don't expect Tony Dungy expected his comments to create such a reaction," Bean said. "He's an intelligent man who's been out there for years in the public eye. One thing we need to educate players about are the ramifications of what they say."
More stunning was the decision by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to suspend Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice a mere two games for punching his then-fiancee unconscious in an Atlantic City casino. Video of Rice dragging an unconscious Janay Palmer out of a casino elevator has been disseminated on the Internet and police reportedly have security footage of the actual battery.
Rice and Palmer held a bizarre news conference in May to discuss the incident. In that conference, Palmer apologized for getting beaten up and Rice said, "Sometimes in life, you will get knocked down."
I guess so – and if you are really lucky, your assailant will drag you out of the elevator instead of leaving you lying there on the floor blocking traffic.
Thank goodness Rice wasn't caught smoking a joint. He'd have been suspended an entire year for that.
The "message" that football sent this month is that the rights of women and gays are minor distractions that do not deserve serious and equal consideration. Homophobia is an acceptable basis for personnel decisions. Domestic violence is part of the acceptable norm rather than an act that undermines basic decency and humanity. That might be interesting territory for the NFL to cover in any sensitivity classes it demands of its players when they run afoul of the league. If so, Goodell and his colleagues might want to consider auditing the course.